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    How to deal with dynamic card on mbr 15 (late 2011)

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by vorob, Mar 4, 2012.

  1. vorob

    vorob Notebook Deity

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    So, i'm on mbr with 4core i7 and 6770.

    When i'm just serfing its 7 hours of battery, so its intel. But when i simply launch steam its 3 hours (looks like amd is turning on). Can i control it?

    And is there any status bar program which will show which card is currently working?
     
    vorob, Mar 4, 2012
    #1
  2. cardriver

    cardriver Notebook Consultant

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    cardriver, Mar 5, 2012
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  3. vorob

    vorob Notebook Deity

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    Its not working, its constantly showing that intel 3000 is working, looks like its incompatible with latec mbr
     
    vorob, Mar 5, 2012
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  4. saturnotaku

    saturnotaku Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    Works perfectly mine on my system, and there's not much difference between the early and late 2011 machines.

    Steam is your problem. If you're not playing a game, don't have it sitting idle. Not only does it activate the dGPU, it also uses quite a lot of CPU time for no reason. This has been an issue on Macs for a long time, and Valve apparently has no interest in fixing it. See this thread for more info:

    Why does steam use SO MUCH CPU - Steam Users' Forums
     
    saturnotaku, Mar 5, 2012
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  5. vorob

    vorob Notebook Deity

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    That's interesting but still unpleasant. I think there are a lot of weird apps which will enable dgpu without a reason. And its hard to control it. Best of all is to have few apps which has possibility to switch cards. Others will only use intel. Buts its not apple way :(
     
    vorob, Mar 5, 2012
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